


infamy (thought it was a good solution)

by mornen



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Child Neglect, Childhood Trauma, Death, Thinking About Death, fucked up character is fucked up, hangnails, heavens arena, pre hunter exam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:34:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27232102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mornen/pseuds/mornen
Summary: You can build a tower to the heavens, but you can’t stop the clouds from blocking your view, and the clouds have surrounded the top of heaven’s arena, making the world outside just a hazy grey.The weather channel says it’s snowing. The news says there might be a war. The clock says that it’s late.And maybe Hisoka’s heart is telling him that he’s wasting his life, but there comes a point when you stop asking what’s wrong with you.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 16





	infamy (thought it was a good solution)

You can build a tower to the heavens, but you can’t stop the clouds from blocking your view, and the clouds have surrounded the top of heaven’s arena, making the world outside just a hazy grey.

The weather channel says it’s snowing. The news says there might be a war. The clock says that it’s late. 

And maybe Hisoka’s heart is telling him that he’s wasting his life, but there comes a point when you stop asking what’s wrong with you. 

He tugs on a hangnail. It comes off with the second tug, leaving a strip of new, pink skin beneath it. He blows on the skin, and it stings for a moment, so he blocks out the pain. It’s just a little pain, but it’s still practice. 

His hair is fading. Hair dye does that. Fades out until the vibrant pink it should have been is just a weak pastel – bubble gum. Maybe he’s sick of dyeing his hair, like he’s sick of doing anything, but he has an image to maintain. 

In the mirror he looks different than anyone has seen him for years and years: Bubble gum hair and slight auburn eyebrows. His face isn’t as sharp as he pretends it is either. But he is alone, and the storm clouds are blocking all the windows, and he’s too high up anyway for anybody to see. 

The windows open. The top half pulls inwards. The bottom panes remain in place, so you can’t jump to your death unless you really try, so you have to send someone up the side of the building to clean them. Not that that’s a problem with the money they’re raking in. 

Raking in a whole pile of money to set it all on fire like a bonfire because what does it really mean? He doesn’t know what anything means except strength, and that’s way too abstract to think about at 0.35 in the morning. 

He lights a cigarette. He smashed the fire alarm ages ago. He sits in front of the window and watches the grey of the clouds outside and the grey smoke rising towards the ceiling and the broken fire alarm, and he really doesn’t have anywhere to go. 

He doesn’t have anything that he wants either, except to kill or be killed. He’s through with asking himself why. Does it matter when you’re getting old (twenty-six), and all the potential for your life is already lost beneath the weight of what you have done. 

People know who he is, and people will remember him when he dies, and that should be good enough. That’s the best you can hope to get out of life: luxury and a memory that can’t die even if you have to. 

Because maybe he is scared of death in that stupid way that you get scared of things you don’t understand. He runs his hand through his hair, and it’s still pastel pink, bubble gum, cherry blossoms on a spring morning, and that’s funny because he’s just violence and an unnatural aesthetic that makes people touch their stomachs because how is that real? (It isn’t.) 

His hand drops to his side. You have to be a freak to get people to look at you when you haven’t got anything, not one thing, not even a name. 

He named himself because ‘boy’ was getting annoying. Too impersonal. ‘Boy.’ ‘Hey, boy.’ ‘Come here, boy.’ None of them fit him anyway. 

He knows he had a name once before he wound up in the gutter, but he doesn’t remember it or his mother. He thinks she got sick when he was young because you do that when you’re living on the streets in the winter. You get cold, catch sick, die. And you have to be special if you don’t want that. 

So he ran, playing card tricks with strangers to steal their money, hitching rides to warmer places, because he wasn’t stupid, and he wouldn’t die like a nobody. 

And now he has a name that people know and a home towering over the rest of the world, but he can’t even gloat with the clouds blocking the view. 

‘Come on,’ he whispers, ‘just give me a fucking break.’

The cigarette burns out, and he presses the butt against the window. It leaves a grey streak, but it’s inside, and no one will have to climb the whole building to clean it. 

Maybe he’ll dye his hair teal this time. But then it would blend in with the heavy blue of winter: the long nights and the uncounted stars. So maybe he’ll dye it pink again. A pink hot enough to turn heads. Throws you off guard for a second, doesn’t it? 

In the morning he’ll go out again, walk through the city with a star on his face, with a teardrop, and everyone will know his name, and people will cross the road to avoid him. And that’s a notoriety that takes a lot of effort to achieve, so he hasn’t wasted all his time if any success is good enough for him. 

He washes his hands. His soap is lavender. That throws you off for a moment too, if you get close enough to him to smell lavender. Fucking lavender. 

He dries his hands on a white towel and goes out to his room again. The sky is still grey, and his reflection is still so much softer than he should be. He touches his cheek, the place where it curves. No one has to know that it does. No one has to know what he looks like when the night is long and snow is falling and he has nowhere new to run. There is nothing new to discover, no secrets to find. And he is so very high up, hidden away behind the clouds, too high up to fall, too hidden to care that for a moment he’s crying, weak and pale in the dark window with bubble gum hair.

**Author's Note:**

> from a request on tumblr ❤️


End file.
